“In the art of seduction, Parsifal will always retain its rank — as the stroke of genius in seduction. — I admire this work; I wish I had written it myself; failing that, I understand it. — Wagner never had better inspirations than in the end. Here the cunning in his alliance of beauty and sickness goes so far that, as it were, it casts a shadow over Wagner’s earlier art — which now seems too bright, too healthy. Do you understand this? Health, brightness having the effect of a shadow? almost of an objection? — To such an extent have we become pure fools. — Never was there a greater master in dim, hieratic aromas — never was a man equally expert in all small infinities, all that trembles and is effusive, all the feminisms from the idioticon of happiness! — Drink, O my friends, the philtres of this art! Nowhere will you find a more agreeable way of enervating your spirit, of forgetting your manhood under a rosebush.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

On this night in 1951 Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors premiered on television.

Born on this day in 1824 composer Peter Cornelius.

Born on this day poet George Crabbe (1754), dramatist and librettist Eugène Scribe (1791), sopranos Lucrezia Bori (1887) and Teresa Stich-Randall (1927), dancer and choreographer Robert Joffrey (1930)
and baritone Richard Cowan (1957).